


aftermath

by joshllyman



Series: dancing in the masquerade [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, LIKE A LOT OF ANGST, Missing Persons, Presumed Dead, but like they are the only ones who haven't given up hope sort of thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:35:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27145312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joshllyman/pseuds/joshllyman
Summary: Before they were three. Now, they are two, and the ache of their missing part is a vacuum that threatens to suck them both into nothingness.
Relationships: Azumane Asahi & Bokuto Koutarou
Series: dancing in the masquerade [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981670
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13





	aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back with....extremely self-indulgent nonsense. Will it make sense out of context? Maybe.  
> Hey so Suga's super missing here, he's not dead but Bo and Asahi have no idea where he is. (I'll spoil it in the end notes). So if that's triggering to you, steer away.

The apartment is a wreck, but honestly, what else is new. 

The waste basket has disappeared under a still-growing pile of balled-up papers in a cartoonish way that makes light of how desperate the situation is. On each paper is an idea, a scrap of hope that they cling to for moments before reality sets in. Each one is crumpled up and disposed of after a moment or two. There are a pile of pizza boxes and takeout cartons there, too, from the early days of this hell when they were still eating somewhat regularly but couldn’t be bothered to cook for themselves or go down to the cafeteria. Now they can’t be bothered to eat at all. On the desk there is a stack of pencils that might have been neat at one point, sharpened to perfection and laid in a pretty little line. They’re tossed about like wreckage from a storm. One is snapped in half, a victim of a moment of rage, of real, deep emotion that seized one or both of them (neither of them can remember doing it, now, but they can’t seem to add the pencil to the pile of garbage, either). One wall has become a timeline of Suga’s last days--or at least, the last days they can account for. A list of contacts here, a compilation of known locations there. It is both haphazard memorial and carefully constructed evidence. In the center of it all is tacked a Polaroid of the three of them, not that they’d forget what he looks like. His bright smile is dimmed by the oils of their hands. It is the only way they can touch him now.

The only undisturbed surface in the room is the bed, where Asahi and Bokuto lay so close to each other they are indistinguishable from a distance. Asahi’s hair has fallen out of the loose ponytail he’d thrown it into when he’d awoken and it frames his face. Both wear dark circles under their eyes and a gaunt expression, haunted by the past and the questions they cannot answer. Bokuto reaches up and pushes Asahi’s hair behind his ear.

“If he comes--when he comes back,” he says, his voice raw from disuse. They’d agreed that second day to never use the word if. “When he comes back, I’m gonna kill him.”

Asahi laughs humorlessly. “Tell me how you’d do it.”

“Punch him.”

“He’ll dodge.”

“Kick him.”

“Your bad knee?”

“Guilt him into submission.”

“He is immune to all emotion-based attacks, as you know.”

Bokuto sighs. If Suga is impervious to death, how is he so infuriatingly absent from them? “I don’t know. I don’t wanna hurt him.”

“But you’re gonna kill him.”

“Yeah.”

Asahi closes his eyes. “When he comes back, I’m gonna kiss him.”

Bokuto lets it hang in the air for a moment. There are crow’s feet wrinkled into the corners of Asahi’s face. He presses into one with his thumb, and Asahi peers at him.

“You serious?”

“Yeah.” He closes his eyes again. Bokuto continues rubbing the muscles of Asahi’s face, fighting the tension he sees. “Yeah, when I see him again, no questions asked.”

“A moment, what, ten years in the making?”

“Eleven.”

Asahi gave his heart away too young, and now look how he suffers. Just behind his jaw there is a knot of bundled up nerves, sore muscles, all the emotions he’s locked up and refused to release. Bokuto digs a knuckle into it. “Well. I hope I’m there to see it.”

“Ow, too much.” 

Bokuto begins to bring his hand back to his side, but Asahi catches it on the way there. He brings it down to rest between them, lacing their fingers together. He smiles, as much as he can, anyway, with the weight of their loss on his lips. But it brings warmth to Bokuto’s heart to see him try.

“Where else would you be?”

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler about where Suga is:  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Yeah he's super a vampire now.


End file.
